Saturday, 27 June 2015

This series passed me by when it emerged in the 2000s but
I'd heard good things about it so I saw the first two 90 minute programmes
which constituted a "miniseries". The first, that is, since the 1970s
version which I had also missed. For those unfamiliar with the setting, a brief
summary follows.

The time is the far future when faster-than-light technology
has permitted interstellar travel. Humanity is settled on a dozen colony
worlds, and to assist with further exploration of inhospitable environments has
developed Cylons – tough, intelligent robots of humanoid shape. The Cylons had
eventually rebelled against humanity and after a stalemated war had withdrawn
from human space forty years before the story begins. But now they are back, on
a war of annihilation – with the aid of a new form of Cylons who are almost
indistinguishable from humans. Their initial attack is successful, leaving the
only hope for humanity the last surviving Battlestar – a giant space warship
named Galactica.

After the initial scenes most of the action in set on board
the Galactica or its one-person "Viper" combat craft. There is a
varied cast of generally well-drawn characters with many personality clashes
driving the plot. Despite this, I found the whole feel of the series to be
rather old-fashioned and unoriginal – a kind of blend of Star Trek and Star
Wars, with just a few of its own twists thrown in. As a matter of personal
preference, I have also never liked the "enemy within" kind of story,
in which the viewer/reader knows which of the "good guys" is really a
"bad guy" – but the good guys do not.

Overall I enjoyed the miniseries, but faced with a further
70 or so episodes I decided that Battlestar
Galactica wasn't quite intriguing or likeable enough for me to want to
devote that much time to it. I probably would have followed it to the end had I
watched it week by week when it first came out, but as I get older so I become
increasingly picky about what I'm prepared to watch or read, especially if that
involves a major time commitment – too much to do, not enough time!

Saturday, 20 June 2015

Chindi is the
third in McDevitt's Academy series featuring Hutch (Priscilla Hutchins) a
spacecraft pilot with a tendency to get involved with alien archaeology; I have
already reviewed The Engines of God
and Deepsix on this blog.

The mix is much as before; mystery and drama set in a future
in which humanity, having recently discovered faster-than-light travel, is
rapidly spreading through the galaxy. Many ruins of dead alien civilisations
have been discovered but the only live one has a primitive level of technology.

The key plot element this time is what appears to be an
alien message accidentally intercepted by a spacecraft exploring in a remote
part of the galaxy.This prompts the
Contact Society, a group of wealthy alien enthusiasts (that is, humans who are
interested in aliens!), to fund an expedition to track down the source of the
message, and Hutch is recruited to pilot them. What follows is an escalating
series of discoveries as the explorers follow the track of the message from
system to system, surviving catastrophic threats not without loss, but drawn
ever onwards by the lure of encountering another spacefaring race. One dramatic
twist follows another as the pace gradually accelerates towards the climax.

The plot is not as intriguing and awe-inspiring as The Engines of God, but it is better
than Deepsix which has a relatively
mundane mystery. The characterisation is improving, although the author still
has a tendency to provide each new character with a sizeable biographical
infodump which is not the best way to learn what kind of people they are. All
in all, this is a good, exciting adventure story in the best traditions of
space opera.

***********************

Courageous is the
third of Campbell's Lost Fleet
series, which is simply one long, continuous story of a running fight between
opposing starship fleets as seen through the eyes of John Geary, commander of
one of the fleets (see my reviews of the first two volumes, and repeat). Nothing
very new happens in this one and the repetition ought to be boring, but every
time I pick up one of Campbell's books I am gripped by his storytelling skills
and find it hard to put down again. This one finishes on a cliffhanger, but I
will try to resist buying any more for a while – too many other books in my
reading pile!

Incidentally, in an interview at the end of the book, the
author lists his favourite TV series. The one in first place is no great
surprise (the original Star Trek),
but in second place comes The Prisoner
(1960s British mystery) and in third The
Avengers (not the comic strip characters, but another 1960s British
series). I can't disagree with any of those, and I enthusiastically endorse his
comment on The Avengers: "Emma Peel. Best. SF. Female.
Character. Ever."

Saturday, 13 June 2015

The third of four films based on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay Part 1 continues the story
of a future dystopia in which Katniss Everdeen has unwillingly become the
figurehead in a rebellion against the established order represented by
President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

This film suffers from the same problem as the last: it has
neither a beginning nor an ending, being merely a continuation of the story, so
is lacking in dramatic structure. It does get away from the Hunger Games format
for the first time, to focus on the rebellion now being led by District 13, a
militarised society separate from Panem (the rest of the country). Katniss has
a largely passive role, acting as the focus for inspirational propaganda films
while suffering from watching her love interest from the previous films being
used as a mouthpiece for President Snow. Frankly not a lot happens, but the
film was just interesting enough to hold my attention so I expect I'll see the
final episode in due course.

Incidentally, there is as usual no help for viewers whose
memories of the previous film have faded over the past year – the movie plunges
straight into the action and I was baffled and confused by it at first. I find
it very odd that film sequels normally provide no recap of previous events to refresh
the memory, while TV series with only one week between episodes frequently do (although
some don't bother even at the start of a new season), and I've seen non-fiction
TV programmes which give a recap after each advert break! Could there please be
some common sense applied here? The value of recaps is directly linked to the
length of time since the previous episode: after one week you really shouldn't
need one – after one year you certainly do.

**********************

The Maze Runner
is another "young adult" film although probably appealing to a
different, more male, demographic. It is based on the eponymous 2009 novel by
James Dashner.

A young man, Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) regains consciousness
with no memory of who or where he is. He finds himself in a group of other male
adolescents, all of whom have arrived in the same way. They are living in the
Glade; a large enclosure, big enough to support buildings, crops and trees, but
surrounded by massive, impenetrable and unclimbable concrete walls. During each
day a section of wall opens to allow exploration of the enormous maze of
similar walls which lies beyond it; but the walls keep reconfiguring themselves
making it impossible to learn a way out. And no-one caught in the maze when the
opening closes at nightfall is ever seen again, but the sounds of monsters –
Greivers – can be heard roaming the maze.

Thomas is not satisfied to accept the status quo and joins
the Maze Runners, the fastest and fittest among the group, who venture into the
maze each day to try to find a way through it. Meanwhile, the situation of the
adolescents becomes increasingly perilous as the rules which have governed
their lives begin to change, leading to conflict within the group.

This is a better film than I had expected: more original,
darker in tone and more gripping than most YA fare, with the gradual
unravelling of the mystery at the heart of it intriguing adults as much as the
target audience. While this particular episode ends with the film, there is
clearly much more to be resolved with the conclusion blatantly teeing up a
sequel.So it's just as well that the
film was a commercial success, with the next episode due to hit the cinema
screens in the autumn. I will be looking forward to it with rather more
interest than I am to the final part of The
Hunger Games.

Friday, 5 June 2015

I read the first three Revelation
Space books by Alastair Reynolds over a decade ago, before I began this
blog: Revelation Space (published in
2000), Chasm City (2001) and Redemption Ark (2002). I stopped
reading the series after that, possibly because I needed a break from the not
insignificant effort involved in grappling with his complex plots, dense
writing and very lengthy stories. I therefore missed the next one in the series
– Absolution Gap (2003) – although I
did read a stand-alone novel, Pushing
Ice (2005), a couple of years ago and reviewed it in this blog.

On looking through my reading pile (which goes back decades)
I noticed Absolution Gap sitting
there so decided to give it a spin. I remember virtually nothing of the earlier
books – reading the Wiki plot summaries rang only the faintest of bells – and I
wasn't about to devote weeks to reading them all again, so I started
"cold" and can only assess it as a stand-alone novel.

Typically of Reynolds, the structure is complex with several
threads running in parallel, set in different places and at different times (to
be precise; 2615, 2675 and 2727, with the prologue and epilogue set four
centuries later). Fortunately the location and date of each chapter are
signalled at the start, so it's not too confusing as long as you pay attention.
However, while two of the threads are new, one (2675) is a continuation of
events and characters in Redemption Ark
and no concessions are made to those unfamiliar with the earlier novels, with
the first summary of previous events occurring around page 200. Since your
reviewer recalled nothing of these, he was left somewhat groping in the dark
(not an unusual occurence…).

Anyway, the 2615 thread is fairly brief, dealing with the
discovery of Haldora, a gas giant with the disconcerting habit of occasionally
vanishing for a fraction of a second. The 2727 thread is set in the same
location on the airless but settled world of Hela, Haldora's moon, where a
precocious teenage girl is searching for her long-lost brother in a strange
environment of vast baroque self-propelled cathedrals which move along a fixed
track around the moon to keep Haldora overhead, so that the inhabitants can
observe the vanishings which are the key element of their religion. In between,
the 2675 thread is set on the watery world of Ararat, a refuge from a war
between humanity – especially the Conjoiners, who have neural implants to enhance
their capabilities – and the Inhibitors, an ancient alien force designed to
destroy advanced civilisations. But they are not left alone for long, and the
two threads eventually combine.

Absolution Gap is
packed full of concepts and races, some of which are left dangling. For example
the Pattern Jugglers of Ararat, a oceanic "world mind" with the
capacity to absorb the minds (and sometimes bodies) of humans who swim in it; and
the Shadows, the Nestbuilders and the Greenfly, mysterious alien races of which
the last two are only described in the epilogue. In fact, the epilogue reads a
little like an outline of a sequel which the author had lost interest in
writing. At 660 pages of small font text, this is not a quick read. Nonetheless
I was absorbed from the start and spent most of one transatlantic flight
reading it.

Two points are worth mentioning about Reynolds' writing:
first, it is very good indeed, comparable with Iain M Banks (although without
the dry humour); second, his Revelation
Space universe, while optimistic as far as the continued survival of
humanity is concerned, is no utopia, and don't expect "happily ever
after" endings. Nonetheless, readers new to the Revelation Space series are in for a treat in terms of top-quality
hard SF provided that you are prepared to set aside a lot of time to read them
carefully, preferably at fairly short intervals so that you can remember
previous events. There is one other novel set in the Revelation Space universe, The
Prefect (2007), which is a prequel to the other four, plus some short
stories.

Welcome to the SFF blog

I started this blog in order to post reviews and comments on Science Fiction and Fantasy (mostly books or films, but occasionally on more general issues such as publishing and marketing), and of course to alert those readers not yet aware of the delights which lie in store within the covers of my own novels...see below.

This remains the main purpose of this blog, but topics may also cover non-fiction issues which may be of interest to SFF enthusiasts. Longer articles, mostly taken from earlier blog posts, are listed below, along with a full index of all book, TV and film reviews.

I aim to post a new message once a month and welcome any comments or discussion. Enjoy!

Anthony G Williams

Scales

Click on photo to find out more, read reviews and download the whole book!

The Foresight War

Click on photo to find out more, read reviews and read the first chapters